Hello everybody. I have just joined your group because I have a question.
Tonight I happened to read a magazine article on TBI. I had never heard of it
as a classified disorder. Some of the things I read alarmed me because I
thought I might be recognizing them. I'd like to get some feedback on this.
I'll give you a bit of information so you'll see my concern.

The suffering person is my nineteen-year-old son. He seemed OK until he was
eighteen months old, so I've been dealing with something for almost twenty years
now. No one has been able to figure it out. A lot of labels have been given,
but he hasn't matched the labels well enough to clearly be diagnosed. All the
help I can get is to drug the heck out of him with SSRI's and then maybe try
ECT, electric shock treatment. To me it seems that no one knows what is going
on. They just want to shut us up by drugging us out of existence.

The condition now is that he has locked himself up into our upstairs hallway and
he won't come out. He has been solidly doing that for a year now. Pior to
that, he was gradually keeping more and more to his room. If anyone tried to
alter him, he went into an unreasonable, killing rage. He has always had
learning problems. He seems unable to accuratly access any feedback his body
gives him. His perceptions are all off--he thinks he slurs his words and he
does not. He hears the tinest sound and he responds like it was a huge sound.
He scans the air with his eyes at times, looking for the tinest of particles
that are so tiny that you and I would never give the any attention. Last March,
the rage lessened so that is no longer such a threat, thankfully.

He has rules and proceedures that MUST be honored before he can do anything. He
get stuck so he can't move on past things. He is very concerned about anyone
'contaminating' anything, but he does not wash and re-wash himself. There were
many learning disabilities when he started school, so I ended up homeschooling
him so he'd learn.

The last time he saw doctors, they were leaning towards him having Obsessive
Compulsive Disorder and Asberger's Syndrome, a high form of Austism. Some
doctors said it couldn't be that, but it didn't seem to make sense to them. He
was born without any problems. Everything seemed to be fine.

Just tonight, after reading about TBI, I remembered that there had been a time
when he was not many weeks old (I can't remember now, but maybe 13 weeks old)
when he unexpectedly rolled off the bed. He hadn't rolled at all and it took
him several rolls to get off the bed. I was just around the corner when it
happened. I heard the thud and came running. I totally wasn't expecting he
could do that. I remember that everyone said it was highly unusual for a baby
to do that so young. Now I'm wondering if all these years TBI was never
concidered and is the problem.

Also, around the age of one, I noticed that he was intentionally slamming the
front of his head into the floor. This behavior has continued, and violently,
too. Whenever something doesn't suit him, it's wham, wham, wham. That has
gotten better, but he still will do it at times. That alone would be enough to
injure my brain, but I'm wondering if this head banging response could have
started from an earlier incident.

Does anyone know if what my son is experiencing could be the result of a very
early TBI? Could it develop into the symptoms of OCD, Asgerger's, repeated
frontal head banging, and all this other stuff? If it is a case of TBI, do the
doctors still treat it with SSRI's, ECT, and all the other things they do when
they throw out mental illness labels? Is there some other treatment? Can there
be any cure? It has always surprised me that in all this time we've been trying
to get help for my son due to some brain disorder, no one has ever bothered to
check out his brain in any way. They seem to look at symptoms and make guesses.
A year ago last May, I took him to a famous neurologist who told me that banging
his forehead couldn't hurt him. Personally I thought she had to be nuts, so I
left. We've had no help from anybody.

If anyone here can give me some guidance, I surely would greatly appreciate it.
You can write me on group or off group if you prefer. You can reach me at
harp@... -- harp at exis dot net

Thank you.

Merrie

PS Thank you for reading such a long e-mail. I didn't know how to say it all
quicker.